Doxing and Intentions

[chimpburgers]

I was going to put this in Events and News but this article I've read recently on what Utah is trying to propose could hold some implications if its passed and more importantly six months of jail time. There's more details in the link itself about what the politician who proposed this thinks is doxing.

From what I'm reading in the comments, there are many who say that this law is misguided and that politicians wouldn't know jack shit about the workings of the Internet, but there's also discussion about intent and how that could possibly affect how people should look at specific situations. A lot of other people in the comments are saying that this would go against First Amendment rights. I'm not in favor of hate speech laws but there was just so much to really digest in this discussion that I wanted to see what other people think.

 

[chimpburgers]

@LikeicareKF had this to say.

'doxing is simply collecting information found elsewhere on the internet, as long as the person posting said information does not then say 'turn up at his house and threaten his parents' or something along those lines, there should be no reason why it should be seen as a criminal offense'

 

[ULTIMATEPRIMETIME]

As long as all the information was gained through legal means, then the only person to blame is the dumbass who carelessly tossed their sensitive info into the public where everyone can see it. We (well, westerners anyway) live in a culture where social media is in everything. Fucking McDonalds, of all things, has a twitter account and a Facebook page you can talk to. People post their food on instagram, their cars on Vine, their pictures and real name on facebook, their inner negroid on Kik, etc. The problem is that no one has told our newer generation that you dont have to post your personal info all over the internet. I would even go as far as to say that this is intentional, since most of these social media sites make big money selling private information to advertising companies.

So if you willingly posted your street address, your real name, and your phone number to the gigantic internet, the one everybody uses, and get mad when someone finds it then i dont know what to tell you other than what the fuck where you thinking.

 

[AnOminous]

I was going to put this in Events and News but this article I've read recently on what Utah is trying to propose could hold some implications if its passed and more importantly six months of jail time. There's more details in the link itself about what the politician who proposed this thinks is doxing.

If you dox someone with the actual intent of causing them physical harm, you can wind up in Club Fed already.

Look what happened to Hal Turner, who doxed three federal appeals judges on his website, accompanying their personal info with this lovely statement:

"Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges deserve to be killed. Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty. A small price to pay to assure freedom for millions."

It didn't help that part of the context was it was in support of neo-Nazi Matt Hale, still imprisoned for attempting to hire someone to murder a federal judge.

Doxing is not going to be illegal by itself unless accompanied by something else, whether an incitement to violence or to commit other illegal acts against the target. This analysis is highly context-sensitive, though. You might note, for instance, that Hal Turner did not directly say "Go kill these judges. Here's where they live." He thought himself clever for staying on what he probably thought was the safe side of the law.

Also, if you're in a criminal case with three senior federal appeals court judges testifying against you, you're pretty savagely fucked. Only a very, very stupid person ends up in that situation.

Whether what Utah plans to do is constitutional would really depend on what the law says, exactly, when it's passed, and whether it can be interpreted in a way that only proscribes conduct that is not protected by the First Amendment. I wouldn't bet on that.

 

[Handsome Pete]

What the average person (e.g. your mom, your boss, the American voter) knows about doxing:

• It's spelled with at least two X's, i.e. "doxxing."
• It's phenomenally hard to do unless you are one of the world's deadliest hackers.
• It's often used in conjunction with swatting, or at least it appears in the same articles.
  
• It was invented by GamerGate in late 2014 for the express purpose of driving women off the internet.
• Victims are chosen at random, and often go bankrupt paying for all the pizzas people send them.
  
• Experts are unsure why it's called "doxing," but research is ongoing.

You'd be terrified too.

 

[Dr. Meme]

that means we should dox everyone as fast as we can before its illegal

 

[GS 281]

• I don't see a problem with it if it is relevant. If it is entirely irrelevant then it is basically being unnecessarily belligerent towards someone. If someone is using doxing as a way to cause someone to feel threatened and nothing more then it is just stupid and tryhard. Doxing family members does nothing more than drag innocent people into things. Posting contact information is also pretty silly and can lead to no good. This information is also dynamic. If you post the address of someone today it will be someone else's address in the future.

 

[Chemical snorfare]

Stella Creasy, a British MP recently claimed that her constituency office was attacked by a hate mob after its address was given out on duh duh duh SOCIAL MEDIA!

She wanted to argue that its bad to be able to talk about politicians (and what they say and do and believe) for some reason (although she is probably the biggest twitter troll in parliament)

this is the office

The one with the big sign over the door

This is the devastation left by the hate mob

story

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/we-marched-for-peace-not-to-bully-stella-creasy/

It always makes me think when politicians look to legislate on how people talk about them.

 

[Innocuous]

It's all about the intent of what you're doing by doxing someone.

 

[Tragi-Chan]

Basically it's another scared-old-people story. To people who aren't familiar with the Internet, there's a cackling mob of masked basement dwellers who are capable of anything. They're the ones in the Occupy protests, they're Neo-Nazis and both sides of Gamergate. They'll steal all your bank details and post nudes of your underage daughter before convincing her to kill herself.

In reality, the Internet is huge and complicated and still evolving, and politicians are incapable of understanding it. The only difference between this and, say, Dungeons and Dragons, rock music or whatever else people are scared of is that this one can actually affect the politicians directly.

What they really want is a law that makes it illegal to be an incomprehensible young person, but until they find a way of specifically saying that, they're going to keep proposing ham-fisted and unenforceable laws based on minimal research. This law will basically be impossible to enforce.

 

[MrRenegadeRooster]

Basically it's another scared-old-people story. To people who aren't familiar with the Internet, there's a cackling mob of masked basement dwellers who are capable of anything. They're the ones in the Occupy protests, they're Neo-Nazis and both sides of Gamergate. They'll steal all your bank details and post nudes of your underage daughter before convincing her to kill herself.

In reality, the Internet is huge and complicated and still evolving, and politicians are incapable of understanding it. The only difference between this and, say, Dungeons and Dragons, rock music or whatever else people are scared of is that this one can actually affect the politicians directly.

What they really want is a law that makes it illegal to be an incomprehensible young person, but until they find a way of specifically saying that, they're going to keep proposing ham-fisted and unenforceable laws based on minimal research. This law will basically be impossible to enforce.

Absolutely, and most voters and politically minded people are older people who have not grown up, or that accustomed to the internet, and most certainly not its culture. They are always scared of what they don't know or understand.

But I also agree it probably has to do alot with a vast amount of politicians stupid decisions being leaked over the internet as well.

 

[melty]

If you don't want to be doxxed dont have an address or use the Internet its not that hard